Population Genetics of Parasites and Their Arthropod Hosts

Arthropoda are currently the largest metazoan phylum. Given that organisms with parasitic lifestyle are thought to comprise the majority of existing species, it's easy to imagine an immense diversity of parasites interacts with arthropods. However, in comparison to organisms parasitising vertebrates, parasites of arthropods are direly understudied despite their abundance, importance, and potential usefulness. Amongst other things, parasites can be used as tools allowing the inference of information on host life history, ecology, and past events the host species have experienced. Population genetic structure of parasites and other symbionts may reflect these traits and events due to their close relationship with the host. Even though parasites comprise a diverse assemblage of taxa, it's possible to identify convergent patterns in their biology. Models predicting congruent population genetic co- structuring can be thus based on a few traits such as host specificity, life cycle complexity or parasite and/or host dispersal. In some cases, the parasite may provide better resolution of population structure than the host itself, serving as a proxy that may be used to direct conservation programmes of both the host and parasite, as has already been done with parasites of vertebrates. This thesis summarises known..